Battlefielding.....Enfield related!?!

[Roger Payne]

Got back from another trip over to the Somme last Thursday. I was just reviewing some of the photo's that I've taken, not only last week, but on trips over earlier in the year. There's an assortment of both small & larger finds, & some quite touching pictures taken in several of the CWGC cemeteries..........I go to pay my respects on a regular basis, making it a point to sign the cemetery registers at Dantzig Alley (where I say hello to Captain Charlie May, whose letters home to his wife still move me to tears even after many readings), & 47th (2nd London) Div cemetery at High Wood. My grandfather survived two attacks on High Wood, only to succumb on 1st November, his Battalion having been given the task to attack over a rise the heavily defended German trenches, Hazy & Boritzka, near Les Boeufs. They were up to their knees in mud & were, by all accounts, cut down by the MG08's as they crested the rise. They never identified his body; he's one of the over 72,000 mentioned on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.

Hope some of you might find the snaps of a little interest. The place is like a magnet to me.....

Addendum: It might mean more if I briefly annotate the pics.:

1. 303 bullet found in a field next to High Wood. It was the site of Seton-Hutchison's million round machine gun barrage to facilitate one of the numerous attacks to capture the wood. (In fact the ten Vickers guns fired one belt less than a million!)
2. Capt Charlie May's grave, Dantzig Alley CWGC cemetery.
3. Silent Picket found in a field near Ginchy, not far from Delville Wood.
4. Dantzig Alley CWGC Sunset July '24.
5. Reconstructed 36th (Ulster) Division trenches, Thiepval Wood.
6. Mill Road CWGC cemetery Thiepval, evening, late July '24. Many of the grave stones are laid flat due to subsidence caused by the numerous German dug outs lying below ground.
7. Poppies in No Man's Land, Thiepval, Summer '24.
8. Two head stones; three young officers. 47th (2nd London) Division, High Wood.
9. Thiepval Franco-British Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. The panels contain the names of over 72,000 men of the British & SA armies who have no known grave.
10, 11, 12. The remains of a Gew 98 I Mauser I pulled out of a field on the outskirts of Pozieres ten days ago. I wasn't even actively field walking - just driving past with my eyes open. The last pic shows how the rifle looked as I drove slowly by - with just about 15 inches of the barrel sticking out of the ground.
13. Site of Pozieres Windmill. The gentle undulations in the ground are all that was left of the windmill by the end of the fighting.
14. A common sight in the fields - a No5 grenade or Mills bomb.